


Glad You're Here

by Deannie



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Gen, Ghost Crew Are Family (Star Wars), flashbacks Are A Thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:14:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28433754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: Sabine and Ezra take a job. They're Spectres, so it's clearly going to go wrong, right?
Relationships: Ezra Bridger & Sabine Wren, Hera Syndulla & Sabine Wren, Kanan Jarrus & Sabine Wren
Comments: 14
Kudos: 34
Collections: Rebels Secret Santa 2020





	Glad You're Here

**Author's Note:**

  * For [booklover81](https://archiveofourown.org/users/booklover81/gifts).



> Takes place between Rise of the Old Masters and Breaking Ranks in season one.

Sabine was really wishing she’d brought more explosives. And maybe an extra charge for her pistols. And a larger crew. _We were idiots to take this job._

How had a simple deal gone so completely wrong? Grya and her smugglers were nothing to worry about in theory, or Kanan never would have let the kid come with her—but the old Correlian had somehow run afoul of Kirita Litti, and the Weequay pirate was a whole different, very deadly, story.

“Well, this could have gone better,” she griped, diving to one side as a blast took out half of the decrepit city wall beside her. She looked back to see the kid running after her, leaping in the air like Kanan to evade another blast and landing next to her, already sprinting again.

Jedi were annoying sometimes.

“Why do I get the idea that a lot of your ops could have gone better?” Ezra asked, taking a quick right into an alley. Sabine didn’t know why he did it, but she followed anyway.

“Usually I blame it on Kanan,” Sabine replied, scouting ahead and finding little cover. “I guess I can’t really do that this time.”

Ezra’s voice was light and mocking. “Oh, no, I think you could—SABINE!”

She should have seen it coming. The smack of a laser shot hit her leg brace, and beskar or not, that _hurt_. She slid forward, bracing herself with her hands to stop herself falling flat on her face. She could hear Ezra’s stunshot firing above her. Why didn’t he have a proper pistol yet?

“Come on, Sabine,” he urged, more fear in his voice now as he grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet. She looked up the alley, in the direction of the shot that had taken her down, and saw a single Weequay, face down on the ground.

“He’s not going to stay down for long,” Ezra reminded her, looking around in a sort of controlled panic. Her near miss had shocked him, clearly, but she’d had worse.

_Not a good thought, Sabine. Moving on…_

The buildings that made up the alley walls, like every other thing on Furnak, were falling apart. Sabine saw the cracked and broken door at the same time Ezra did, it seemed.

“In there,” she said, lurching forward. Shab, her thigh hurt! But it took her weight, and that was all she cared about, right at the moment. “Maybe we can cut through to another street.”

They wouldn’t lose the pirates completely—she wasn’t that optimistic—but it might put enough distance between them for her or Ezra to get a call off to the _Ghost._ Hera had taken another job while Sabine covered this one, but they weren’t far. They could be here in hours.

If she and Ezra _had_ hours.

“I’m thinking this might have been more than a two-person job,” Ezra muttered, as they were swallowed up by the dark of the building.

“You think?” The floor creaked under them, brittle and old, and Sabine wondered whether it would hold up long enough for the two of them to get—

With an almighty crack, the floorboards gave way, and Sabine held in her own cry of surprise as she heard Ezra yell as they dropped. A long way.

Ezra’s holler ended with an abrupt smack of body hitting ground a second before she felt her own body hit, and the blackness slammed her into unconsciousness.

“This is trooper 6154, commencing sweep of section 34-2.”

Sabine kept her breathing shallow as the stormtrooper and his partner outside walked past the open window above her head. The bruising she’d taken in the side was deep enough that she knew she’d scream if she inhaled too deeply.

Dordon Prime was known for two things, crime and the Imperial base that had promised to quell it. An Imperial base that had all kinds of wonderful ordinance, ripe for the taking.

_We were idiots to take this job._

“Understood, trooper 6154,” came a tinny voice over the buckethead’s comms. “We have ties in pursuit of the cruiser that blasted past the blockade, but there may still be hostiles on the ground.”

“Acknowledged,” the trooper responded.

“Aren’t they _all_ hostiles around here?” his partner responded sarcastically.

“Just keep looking,” 6154 replied. Their boots moved on.

Sabine drew on every lesson in calm and waiting that her mother had ever taught her, listening as the two men made their way down the street and away. _A battle is won by silence. By cunning. Bravado is the downfall of fools._

And what a fool she’d turned out to be. Her mother would be so proud…

The boxes around her weren’t enough to hide her if the troopers were serious about searching for her, but in her experience, they rarely were. How hard did you really look for one more smuggler on a world that was full of them?

 _Pretty hard, when one of them stole a half-dozen crates of munitions from the Empire_ , she thought bitterly _._ _And then left her partner to die._

Ketsu had even yelled an apology, as she raced up the gangplank and disappeared.

“I’m sorry,” she’d called. “There’s nothing I can do.”

She could’ve done something. Sabine looked down at the bloody slice in her leg, running from knee to hip, just to the outside of her armor. She didn’t even have anything to bind it—her backpack full of explosives had met its end when she lobbed it at the armory guard as she limped away. Her head was already swimming from the blood loss, and the warm jungle weather wasn’t helping her stay awake.

She was probably going to bleed to death here. Alone. In this broken-down old hovel—

The soft sound of footsteps, coming from the other side of the house, froze her solid. Too quiet to be troopers. Suddenly her heart was beating loud enough to muffle the sound, but not cover it completely.

“Just our luck to have someone _else_ be hitting the armory.” The voice was quiet, female, irritated.

“I’m just hoping Zeb got away…” A male voice replied then petered out as the footsteps stopped.

Sabine clutched her pistol, willing away the blurriness of her vision in the dark heat of the night. She stared at the doorway across the room, waiting for their arrival. If she fired, she’d be found by the troopers in a second. If she didn’t, and these guys were armed, she could be dead a whole lot sooner.

“It’s okay,” the male said as the two voices gained shapes, the scant light from the doorway lining their figures as they entered the room.

“Sabine?”

Sabine blinked in confusion. How did he know her name? The two shadows showed a human male and a Twi’lek woman. The Twi’lek had a gun in her hand.

“Sabine?”

_I’m going to die here._

“Sabine, can you hear me?”

_Ezra?_

Sabine took a deep breath to clear her mind, feeling a phantom pain from what seemed like a lifetime ago digging into her side. The pain in her leg was all too current, though. It was dark…

“Sabine, come on,” Ezra called softly, his voice rough with pain of its own. “Please wake up.”

“I’m here,” she murmured, not quite ready to move yet.

“Wherever here is,” Ezra replied. She heard him shifting in the darkness and he let out a long moan of pain. “Okay, this sucks,” he muttered.

Sabine snorted at that and finally eased into a sitting position. He really did sound like he was injured. Glad her helmet had protected her from the fall, she slid her rangefinder into placed and cursed quietly.

"What's wrong?" Ezra asked, a wince clear in his voice.

"My helmet took a hit in the fall," she griped, flipping the useless 'finder up and taking off her helmet to get a better look around. She was starting to be able to see just a little, as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, and Ezra was a black lump off to her left, hunched over himself and hurting. She looked up at the small, ragged hole in the floorboards a good three or four meters above them. _That’ll be fun to tackle._

“What did _you_ hit when you landed?” She wished she could risk her light, but Litti’s thugs were still after them and Weequay had good eyes in the dark. The basement—or subbasement, she guessed, since they really were a _long_ way down—was big, piles of boxes in the corners reminding her unpleasantly of the last time she was hiding alone and injured.

 _Almost alone._ “Ezra?” she demanded when his answer took too long.

“I’m fine,” he replied shortly.

Sabine growled at that. They’d been through this with the kid before. “Ezra,” she warned. “Now isn’t the time to keep things from me that might get us both killed.”

He sighed, but Sabine could hear the fear and worry underneath his pain. Keeping his weaknesses to himself was too ingrained in him now, after years on the street alone, to be cast aside so easily just because the Spectres had taken him in. But he was learning. “I think I broke my arm when we fell.” He was silent a long moment. “And… maybe my head.”

“You broke your head?” she asked, amusement and worry in her tone. “Great,” she muttered under her breath. “Kanan is going to kill me.”

“It’s not broken. Just ringing,” Ezra assured her. “And this isn’t your fault. How were we supposed to know Grya was stupid enough to double cross pirates?”

There was a thread of awe in his voice, which confused her. “You’ve backtalked Vizago, kid,” she reminded him. “Since when do pirates scare _you_?”

Ezra’s reply was small. “Vizago’s just a conman. I’ve… heard stories about the Weequay.”

Sabine had to give that one to him. Weequay had a reputation for shooting, cutting, or torturing first and not bothering with questions. It was part of their showmanship. “Weequay are trouble,” she agreed, “but they’re usually more interested in making a deal than killing you outright.”

“Unless you’re dealing with the smuggler who stole their cargo to sell it to you,” he pointed out dismally.

 _Shab._ “Well, there is that.” She slid closer toward him, wishing again that she could risk a light and get a better look at him. He must be hurting pretty bad. He wasn’t usually this pessimistic—at least since his Jedi training had started going better the last month or so. “Look, Ezra. We’ll get out of this."

His normal bluster was suddenly back, sounding forced. “No, I know we will. It’s just—” the shadow that was him suddenly froze, looking up at the floor above. “Someone’s coming.”

Sabine hadn’t heard anything, but she’d known Kanan long enough to know that Jedi could see and hear things coming before anyone else could. And even though he was still a baby Jedi, as Chopper liked to call him, Ezra was learning fast. Sure enough, only a few seconds passed before the floorboards above started creaking. The footfalls were heavy. Deadly.

“Where the hell did they go?”

Sabine couldn’t place the voice, but the heavy accent spoke of one of the Quarren in Litti’s group. Quarren actually _were_ as bloodthirsty and murderous as their reputation. The creaking increased, and the footsteps slowed cautiously. A shine of light hit the edge of the hole in the floor above, searching.

“Move back,” Sabine whispered, sliding toward the boxes along the wall as soundlessly as she could. She looked over to see the dark lump that was Ezra scuttle toward her and into the shadows. He was breathing fast, short and stressed, and he had the one arm tucked in close to his body.

“There’s a hole in the floor here,” the pirate growled, calling loud enough that he must have been talking to someone still outside. Sabine silently drew her blaster. She might take down one pirate, but his partner would be on her in a second. They weren’t going to get out of a firefight once they got into it. Kanan was going to kill her if she let anything more happen to the kid.

“We’re not here. We’re not here. We’re not here. We’re not here….” Ezra’s sudden pained mutter had her turning to focus on him. She could see him a little more clearly here, and his eyes were squeezed shut as he spoke. The constant mantra stirred something weird in her, almost forcing her not to believe what she saw in front of her. _She_ nearly believed he wasn't there, and she was looking straight at him.

“Nah,” the Quarren growled above. The light disappeared. “They’re not here. Must have moved on to the next block over.” The floor creaked so dangerously that Sabine covered her head, waiting for a lap full of pirate. “Damn place is falling apart. Let’s get out of here.”

“We’re not here. We’re not here…”

“Ezra.” Sabine called, as the sound of footsteps above finally receded. “Ezra?” She reached out to grab his arm.

“We’re not— _shab_!” Ezra jumped, totally back with her, and Sabine remembered too late about his broken arm.

“I’m sorry,” she hissed into the silence, amazed that he’d been able to keep his oath to a quiet cry. “I’m sorry,” she repeated.

“It’s okay,” he shot back quickly, hiding his face in the shadows as he protected the broken limb.

It struck Sabine that she’d never seen him scared like this. Even on Stygeon Prime, he’d done his job with all the swagger of a born streetrat. But he wasn’t one, was he? He’d had a family once, a normal childhood.

_Like mine. Before the Academy._

_Before Dordon Prime._

Sabine pulled out her torch finally and placed it behind the box next to her, wanting a little illumination, but hoping it wouldn't reach the hole above. The dim light showed her that Ezra hadn’t just broken his arm, he’d torn it up pretty good, too. His head wasn’t bleeding anywhere, but the squint of his eyes against the scant shine of the torch said it all.

 _“Looks like you ran into something sharp, kid.”_ _Kanan’s soft, careful voice rang in her memory._

 _Not thinking about that_ , she reminded herself forcefully.

She slid her pack off and rummaged around for the one bacta patch she had left. The things didn’t grow on trees, and they hadn’t really had the credits these days to stock up. Her leg hurt like stink, but it could wait until they were home and safe.

“Let me take a look at that ‘nothing’,” she said quietly.

Ezra glanced away guiltily but offered up the arm. His hand was shaking—and not just from the injury.

“How did you do that?” she asked, hoping the question would shake him out of his panic.

“Do what?” His breathing was already slowing down, though it still hitched with pain.

“Convince that pirate we weren’t here.”

“I…” Ezra looked up at her in confusion as she cleaned off what blood she could and took a better look at the wound without ripping his jumpsuit any more than it already was. Nothing too horrible.

_“You probably won’t bleed to death before we get you out.”_

_“Kanan, be nice.”_

_“That_ was _nice.”_

“I guess…” Ezra was thinking. Which meant he wasn’t panicking, so Sabine left him to it without prodding any further. “When I was a kid, after… after Mom and Dad were gone, I was really good at hiding.”

Sabine thought about what it must have been like for a kid on the streets. Hiding was probably all he _could_ do to protect himself. She looked up at his face to see him caught in the memory. There was a pretty good-sized lump growing on his forehead, just above his left eye…

“One time, when I was… eight, maybe? I took a meal packet from one of the boxes the stormtroopers had delivered.”

“Ugh,” Sabine replied, carefully pulling up Ezra’s sleeve to get the bacta wrap on. He hissed and moaned a little, but he didn’t resist. “I remember those. They taste like poodoo.”

“You take what you can get, right?” Ezra replied, his voice small and just a little sharp.

“Sorry.” Even after she’d run from the Academy, Sabine hadn’t really had to beg or steal for a meal.

_“I don’t need your help.” She’d been so smug, hadn’t she? Fifteen and knew it all._

_“Of course you don’t, kid,” Kanan had replied. “But how about you let us give it anyway.”_

“Anyway, one of them actually noticed. I ran. Hid. But… he kept coming.” It sounded like it had been a bad one. She wondered if this particular pursuit reminded him a little too much.

_He’s not the only one._

Sabine sat back, looking at her handiwork. He’d need the medical holodroid once they got back to the _Ghost_ , but he’d be okay. “And you convinced him you weren’t there.”

“I didn’t try to,” Ezra replied, puzzled as he remembered. “I mean, it was just sort of… wishing he’d stop looking where I was. And he did.” He looked up at her finally, a spark of the normal, curious Ezra in his eyes now. “You think it was like Kanan’s whammy? Like he did with the troopers at the Spire?”

Sabine rooted around in her pack and came up with a ration pack. “I don’t know, Ezra. All I can tell you is that you nearly convinced _me_ that you weren’t there.”

Ezra was silent for a long moment as he took the half a protein bar she offered, munching on it as the bacta clearly started washing away some of the pain.

“I’m glad you’re here, though,” he told her.

_“I’m just glad we picked this old house to hide in,” Hera murmured, tying off the bandage on Sabine’s leg._

Sabine smiled and ate her food. “I am, too.”

Ezra blushed—clear even in the half light—and Sabine wisely moved on from the moment.

“So, do you think our comms will get through this basement?” she asked brightly, pulling out the signal booster she’d brought to make up for Furnak’s horrible communications infrastructure. “Because I, for one, would like someone _friendly_ waiting for us when we climb out of this place.”

“It’s okay,” the man said as the two voices gained shapes, the scant light from the doorway lining their figures. “We’re not going to hurt you.”

Sabine glared through her helmet at him, but… There was something about him. Something almost safe.

“Come any closer, and I’ll shoot,” she warned. Except she knew she wouldn’t.

“That would make things awkward,” the woman said. “And I don’t think we have a lot of time.” She nodded almost imperceptibly at the man, and he stepped ahead of her. She holstered her weapon. “We should probably get out of here before those troopers come back.” Her voice was quiet and gentle.

“Who are you?” Sabine asked, her sweat making the grip of her pistol slippery. Why were they making moves like they were actually here to help her?

“Friends. Maybe?” the man offered. He came closer and for some reason, Sabine let him. Her hand was shaking now, the blur that was the world intensifying. If she was going to shoot, it would have to be now.

Except she didn’t.

“Looks like you ran into something sharp, kid,” he murmured, crouching down to examine her leg without touching. How he knew she was a kid under her armor, she didn't know. His calm, carefree demeanor was both unsettling and comforting at once. “If you put down the blaster, maybe we can help?”

“I don’t need your help,” she growled. But she did. She did, and it terrified her that some big part of her seemed perfectly willing to let these two complete strangers get this close.

“Of course you don’t, kid,” the man replied. “But how about you let us give it anyway.”

His face blurred before her eyes, more shadow than substance now as she started to lose her hold on reality.

She was going to die here.

“No. You probably won’t bleed to death before we get you out,” he said quietly, like he’d heard her speak when she hadn’t. His hand was on her blaster and she could barely feel it as he eased it out of her grip.

“Kanan, be nice.” The Twi’lek woman knelt beside her, her touch light but so, _so_ painful as she probed Sabine’s wound.

“That _was_ nice,” the man—Kanan—responded, hurt.

“Who are you?” Sabine asked again, eyes closing despite herself. Maybe… maybe she wasn’t going to die here after all.

“Like Kanan said,” the woman replied, “we’re friends.”

“I don’t need friends,” Sabine whispered. Friends left. Friends…

“Okay, not friends, then,” the woman said, her voice fading even more as Sabine just couldn't hold on any longer. “Not yet. I’m just glad we picked this old house to hide in.”

Sabine slipped out of the memory into the world, her body aching but glad to feel the cushion of her bunk beneath it.

It hadn’t taken long for the _Ghost_ to heed their distress call and for Kanan and Zeb to get to them. By that time, Ezra had been calmer, better, but Kanan was still hovering like an anxious father—which was mildly entertaining to watch. Hera, of course, had been the calm and calming mother hen that she was.

_“We’re a crew. A team. In some ways, a family.”_

The sharp memory of waking in this cabin for the first time struck her suddenly. She never did know how Hera and Kanan got her from that broken down old hovel to the _Ghost_ —hadn’t really understood why they bothered. But when she woke, Hera had been there.

“We were starting to wonder if you’d sleep all week,” she said softly, her smile open and easy and promising nothing. And everything. “Are you hungry?”

“I’m fine,” Sabine had lied, trying for sharp and cold, but coming up confused.

"Your helmet is here," Hera said quietly, gesturing to the dresser top behind her. "And your leg plate. I'm sorry, I had to take it off to get a better look at the wound."

Sabine looked down and saw a bacta wrap tight around her leg, over her suit. Field dressing style—they hadn't wanted to strip her when she was alone and vulnerable... She sat up and took stock of herself. She felt better than she had since Ketsu ran up that gangplank and left her for dead.

Not that that feeling explained what had happened after.

“Why did you do that?” she asked, watching Hera carefully for any sign of a lie. She remembered overhearing the conversation the two of them had been having before they found her. “You were clearly here to hit the armory, too. Shouldn’t you have just taken out the competition?”

“We weren’t there to steal the ordinance,” Hera had explained. “We were there to destroy it.”

Sabine remembered being even more perplexed. “Why?”

“The Empire was going to use it against innocent beings.” Hera looked her in the eyes, and Sabine felt like the woman could see every sin in her soul. “What would you have done?”

 _What_ would _I have done?_ At the time, Sabine had _hoped_ she knew, but she hadn’t really known at all.

“Now, I’ll ask again, since you’ve been sleeping for almost a cycle.” Hera smiled at Sabine’s shock. “Are you hungry?”

Against every instinct to distrust her, every urge to run, Sabine took the hand Hera offered her, and stood. “I guess… I could eat.”

It had been that easy. And that hard.

Sabine hadn’t trusted them completely, of course, not at first, but there was something about them that just told her to trust them.

_“You think it was like Kanan’s whammy? Like he did with the troopers at the Spire?”_

She wasn’t sure what to think about that thought.

Sabine stood up and stretched until she creaked and made her way to the common room. Her leg still hurt, but it was the residual ache of a hit to her armor, not the sharp pain of that slice that took weeks to really heal.

“We were starting to wonder if you’d sleep all week.”

Hera’s words from Kanan’s mouth. He sat alone quietly at the Dejarik table, looking at something on his data tablet. Just… normal.

“How’s the kid?” she asked, sliding onto the bench from the other side. Kanan put his tablet down and gave her his full attention.

“Griping about wearing the cast and sporting a hell of a headache, but he’ll be fine.” His eyes softened. “If I’d known things were going to turn that bad—”

“I’m sorry, Kanan,” she said, cutting him off. She knew he’d be mad at her for getting Ezra hurt. “I should have—”

“Done just what you did,” Kanan broke in. “Sabine, you couldn't have known Grya was pulling a fast one on a band of pirates. You did good." His silence had her looking up. "I trust you to take care of him.”

That was… nice.

“I think he’s done a pretty good job of taking care of himself,” she replied. Ezra’s actions rattled around in her head. “And I think he’s been using the Force more than he knew he was.”

Kanan just looked at her, asking silently for more.

“When Litti’s guy came into the house we were in… I think Ezra put the whammy on him.”

“Whammy?” Kanan asked, a small grin breaking out.

“You know,” she said, waving her hand around in a Jedi way. “’You didn’t see me. I was never here.’” Kanan chuckled and she smiled in response. “Like you do.” She shrugged. "He didn't really know he was doing it, but it worked."

Kanan sat back, a thoughtful look on his face. “Huh.”

“Kanan,” Sabine asked, the words out of her mouth before she could censor them. “When we first met… Did you…?”

“What? Put the whammy on you?” he asked lightly. The grin returned, and Sabine took heart in that. “That’s for the weak-willed, Sabine, and you have _never_ been that.” He met her eyes with his and she saw only affection. “The Force takes you where the Force wills,” he said quietly. “When we saw you on Dordon Prime, we knew you needed help. _Our_ help." He cocked his head. "Maybe you were just meant to be here. Why else would Hera and I have walked into that house when we did?”

It was a nice thought. A mystical thought to be sure, but nice. That she was meant to be part of this family.

“Your Force seems to be amassing quite a group around here,” she said, rising. She was hungry. “You better stop collecting—I’m not sharing a room with anyone.”

Kanan smiled and picked up his tablet again. “Noted.”

“And Kanan?” she called impulsively, standing in the doorway of the galley and looking back at him. “I’m glad you were there.”

His grin was warm and welcoming and home.

“I am, too.”

*****

the end


End file.
